The present invention concerns an identifying process and a booth equipped with interblocking doors operated automatically according to the aforesaid process, and which guarantees the passage of one authorized person at a time, and it is designed for security and for controlling the entrance of places where only authorized people are allowed to enter.
Existing booths have one entrance door and one exit door which are interblocking, i.e. only one of the two can be opened at a time. The doors are activated by a guard placed inside the protected area, in a booth, or even far from the entrance, who in any case has a constant view of the controlled space through a closed circuit surveillance system.
This system is expensive because the control of the access must be operated by personnel; furthermore, it is not considered safe because if said personnel should be controlled by ill-intentioned individuals, it would leave the control of the access in their hands, with obvious consequences.
Another existing booth, Italian Patent Application no. AR94A00011 by Alessandro Manneschi, is equipped with a metal detector and an induction card detector, it is adequate to allow the access to the protected area to all those people who do not carry arms, or metal equipment similar to arms. When authorized people, carrying a recognized induction card, are allowed to pass the metal detector is de-activated or its sensitivity is reduced in order to limit false alarms at their passage, therefore the passage through the controlled entrance becomes more rapid. This type of booth does not carry out a thorough control of the identity of the persons carrying the induction cards, who could be different from their legitimate owners. Therefore, this booth is perfect to facilitate traffic through those passages where a very strict check of the people passing through the booth is not necessary.
Another type of existing booth, with the same interblocking doors, requires a button to request the opening of the door, or a digit panel on which to digit an access code or a card reader, the code or cards being owned only by authorized personnel.
Therefore, the existing systems are a metal detector which blocks the entrance of people carrying metal masses similar to arms, a weighing mechanism which is aimed at ensuring the passage of one person at a time (antihostage and antiescort system), and finally a system based on verifying one""s identity consisting of a digit panel on which a personal access code is digited, or even a biometric sensor to read the finger print or hand print of the person that has to access the protected area.
The said type of booth, although complex, does have a number of inconveniences and cannot be considered completely safe. In one case it requires the activation of manually operated commands at the entrance which allow anyone to enter the booth, in another case it requires the use of magnetic cards or a digit panel and codes to limit the access to authorized people only. However, in these last cases ill-intentioned people can always recognize those people who are authorized to enter, obtain their cards or codes in order to pass through the booth.
Said booths are equipped with a weighing system which is normally set at a limit of 120-140 kg, which is an antihostage and antiescort system, and in any case allows the passage of light weight couples, without carrying out the functions for which it is made.
The digit panel inside the booth on which a personal secret code is digited, does not guarantee that the person digiting it is the same authorized person and not an ill-intentioned person who, after threatening the victim, has obtained the secret code from an authorized person.
If the identifying mechanism inside the booth is biometric, it normally involves the physical contact of all authorized people with special reference surfaces. This system is strongly criticised and identifies only one person at a time and not an eventual accompanying person in the case in which the weight of both should amount to less than the one set on the weighing system which precedes the biometric reading step.
The aim of this invention is to create an identifying process and a booth with one entrance door and one exit door that are interblocking. The booth is commanded by the above mentioned process in order to guarantee that only one person at a time is allowed to walk through it and also that the person""s identity be certain, furthermore it has minimal operating costs. The invention therefore is aimed at:
ensuring access to the protected area only to those who are authorized;
allowing access to one person at a time in total security (antihostage and antiescort functions);
verifying the identity of the person in transit with the authorized ones;
making the operation of the booth completely automatic, and preferably structured so that it can be operated free-of-hands, that is without requiring, at least at the entrance, the authorized people to activate any mechanical means as digit panels or readers, so that ill-intentioned people will not be able to identify them.
Such a device to control the passage is better than a booth with interblocking doors and guards operating the commands from a control panel from where the doors of the booth are commanded, with an increase in security and a reduction of operating costs that are easily understood.
The invention that can reach said results consists of a process to identify the people authorized to transit through a controlled passage and of the means with which the process is carried out. It consists of a booth structure, usually armoured, having two interblocking doors equipped to read the identification code of the person passing through the booth, and of a weighing device which can measure the weight of the person or persons inside the booth when it is closed, and of a biometric reader combined with a programmed logic Unit, placed anywhere, that can command the doors of the booth and any other mechanism, having memorized at the very least the identity codes, the weight and biometric data of the people authorized to enter. The programmed logic Unit operates the controls by comparing the previously memorized information inside it with the one transmitted by the means placed at the entrance of the booth by receiving the identity code of the people authorized to enter and the information supplied by the weighing system and also the one given by the biometric reader inside the booth.
An identifying process and a booth equipped and commanded as such are especially advantageous because:
access is allowed only to the person owning the card with the authorized code. The reading of the person""s weight inside the booth and its comparison to the memorized one corresponding to the code that has determined the access to the booth, ensure the presence inside the booth of only one person whose weight is equal to the one of the authorized person whose assigned code has allowed entrance to the booth, or to more than one person whose total weight is equal to the one of the person owning the code that has activated the opening of the booth;
the correspondence of the information transmitted by the biometric reader to the one memorized with the name of the holder of the code that has activated the process, ensures that only the code holder who has activated the booth is present within the booth and therefore is allowed to enter the protected area; finally,
the use at the entrance of an electromagnetic wave device, (antennas for the reading of induction cards), determines the opening of the door to the booth only when the user holding an authorized induction card is near the door, so that no physical action is necessary on the part of the authorized person in order to enter the booth and therefore is not recognizable by ill-intentioned people; and after the entry door is opened, the activation of the weight device commences, so that when the person crosses the entry door and is weighed on the floor inside the booth, a second reading is made in order to verify that the person entering the booth is the one carrying the authorized card and not someone else, then the closing of the entry door commences. Accordingly, the first reading activates the opening of the entry door of the booth and the second reading, if it coincides with the first one, activates the closing of the entry door.
The process, object of this invention, and the booth, comprising all its functional parts, ensure an absolute certainty of the identity of each person passing through the booth to access the protected area.